


Color

by quietinthelibrary



Category: Free!
Genre: Haru's Birthday Bash, M/M, basically it follows the events of high speed! and free! based on that premise, depends on how you interpret it, kinda sorta an au i guess?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-06-27
Updated: 2014-06-27
Packaged: 2018-02-05 23:08:06
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,272
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1835560
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/quietinthelibrary/pseuds/quietinthelibrary
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Haru sees the world in gray-scale until he meets Rin, who shows him a sight he'd never seen before.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Color

 

The first color he sees is red.

 

It's odd, he thinks, how he could've gone his whole life without experiencing these colors, but now that he sees them, he would never want to go without them. It was only after he'd been exposed to the colors that he realized the world he'd always ever saw held only a pale imitation of some of the richest, fullest sights the world could offer.

Always, always, the most vivid color would be red, even amongst the loud shades of yellow, the gentle greens, the cool purples, or even against his favorite color, blue. Maybe it came from the bias of familiarity, as it was the first color he saw, or maybe it came from _why_ Haru associated red with vividness; Haru wasn't quite sure.

 

The first time he sees the color red, a red-haired boy holds the hand of a younger, similarly red-haired girl, leading her by the hand as they followed behind (now faceless) adults in faded whites and grays. It only happens for a brief moment, but the redness of their hair seeps into his vision, and Haru wonders if the boy is crying. A sense of unease over the parade creeps on him, and he knows Makoto is scared by it all, so when he meets glaring red eyes, he takes Makoto's hand and runs. The color fades soon after, and Haru doesn't think much more of it at the time. (The funeral procession had been more than enough to occupy his mind.)

 

Then, he races a boy with red hair, watches as the boy flops down beside the pool in exhaustion, and wonders (again) if the boy's crying, as red bleeds into his vision once more. This time, Haru doesn't think it's just a trick of the light, but, not fully understanding it, turns away, and thinks that that would be the end of it.

 

For some reason, though, the boy managed to get under Haru's skin, and Haru didn't know why that was the case.

 

(He only ever swims with the red-haired boy, who he finds out is called Matsuoka Rin, at swim meets, and he comes to remember the way the water feels when Matsuoka's swimming in the next lane over. The only times he'd see red would be when he goes to a swim meet and competes against him—when he loses to him in the 50m but wins in the 100m free—but Haru thought that would be the end of it, then.)

 

Instead, the red becomes a more permanent fixture in his young life when the red-haired boy becomes a transfer student, and the brief flashes of red from Matsuoka's hair and eyes start to stay, bleeding into the apples and cherries at the supermarket, the red lights at intersections, and the red of his colored pencils, as though lending its redness to every other red thing he saw. Meanwhile, Matsuoka forces his way into Haru's life, making him go to the trouble of joining his relay team, despite the fact that he only swims free.

(It had nothing to do with feeling slightly obligated to not disappoint wide-eyed Nagisa, clearly-hopeful-but-not-wanting-to-overstep-his-boundaries Makoto, or even Matsuoka, nothing at all.)

 

Soon after he said that he'd swim the relay, Matsuoka calls the four of them a team and decides that they should refer to each other by their first names. He calls Haru “Haru” instead of “Haruka,” which makes a flicker of something warm pass through his chest, but he shrugs it off as Matsuoka—Rin, now—continues with calling Makoto “Makoto,” and Nagisa “Nagisa.” Rin then tries to get them to call him “leader,” but Nagisa calls him “Rinrin” and Haru actually allows himself to laugh, silently, while knowing that he wasn't going to let that go any time soon. His mirth stops soon after Nagisa calls him “Haru-chan,” but he doesn't say anything to correct Nagisa, in the end.

 

Nagisa eventually ends up calling Rin “Rin-chan,” and then Rin makes the declaration that he's only going to focus on the relay, and that the others should do the same if they want to win the relay event. Nagisa's quick to go along with it, happy to focus on the relay alone, but Rin's announcement only aggravates Haru—what gave him the right?

 

Later, Rin tells Haru and Makoto that he won't be going to middle school here, because he was leaving for Australia, and Haru is angrier than he had ever been before. (He has an overwhelming urge to run to the reassuring embrace of the water, and then he realizes—is he running away to the water?

_Am I using the water to hide my real self?_

And Haru questions himself on why he swims in the first place.)

Haru uses the minimum amount of words he can muster in response (without asking all the important questions, because Rin wouldn't respond to them), and irritatingly enough, Rin knows exactly what he'd meant, sees through Haru's heart, and promises to show him “a sight” he'd “never seen before,” and how could Haru turn an offer like that down?

That day, when he swims (free), he suddenly finds that the water around him is tinged with blue. When practice ends, he sees the blueness of the lockers, the blue of his jacket, the blue of the sky, and when he looks in the mirror, he sees the full color of his eyes for the first time.

(For a moment, Haru wonders if this is what he meant by the “sight.”)

 

As the days pass before their first race, more colors are slowly revealed to Haru—one day, as he walks to school with Makoto, he sees the brown of his hair and the green-ness of his eyes, and now he can see the colors of the trees and plants around him, can fully appreciate the brown trunk of the great sakura tree that his class is making a flowerbed around. Nagisa's bright, sunshine-yellow hair stands out as much as Rin's red hair and eyes, and his pink eyes were close to the red that Haru's grown used to, and leads Haru to realize that there are different shades and hues of colors to take note of as well.

 

(He eventually concludes that Rin's hair were more of a maroon shade, though he would still say Rin's eyes were red.)

 

 

The team that Rin puts together swims a grand total of three races. The first race comes after graduation, which comes and goes for Haru, and that time, Haru swims badly. He knows he was swimming badly at practices up until then, but that was because he couldn't treat the water the way he used to, now that it was for a competition, now that he had to care about his times.

Before that, though, Aki had told him her thoughts on swimming with her relay team, and how swimming was fun to her, and those words stuck with Haru as he tried to figure out what it meant to swim on a relay team.

Just before their second race, Nagisa confides in him that he was nervous, afraid of letting the whole team down, and Haru starts to get an idea of what swimming in a relay is about.

 

In their second race, Rin's the one that falters, but Haru's able to make up the ground Rin lost; he comes to realize that he, like Nagisa, can just stay himself when it came to the water and when it came to swimming in a relay, and swims without caring about the time, caring only about feeling the blue water around him.

 

He asks Rin afterward, “What happened back there?” and gets an apology in response; in turn, Haru apologizes for making him worry, deducing that that was what made Rin falter. He gets a smile and a nod, before Rin addresses the team, and finally answers the questions that Haru had wanted Rin to answer since learning about his decision to go to Australia.

He learns that Rin had wanted to fulfill his dad's dream of being an Olympic swimmer by following in his footsteps—being in a first place medley relay team at Iwatobi SC—and also, to be the best team, with the three of them. And with that in mind, the four of them got ready for their last race.

 

When they swim their third and final relay, Rin doesn't renege on his promise—Haru definitely sees a sight he had never seen before as he jumps, hears his name falling from Rin's lips, and swims toward the goal; he's sure that if Rin showed him a rainbow at that very moment, he would be able to appreciate it in full, and he smiles to himself (strangely enough), thinking about how Rin had gone from an irritating presence to someone that made him feel an unusual pleasantness in his chest.

 

 

They bury their (blue) trophy together in the garden behind the Iwatobi SC, and coincidentally come across the gold medals that Rin's dad's team had won 23 years ago. It seems that Rin's dad's teammates had the same idea, as they had to have buried their medals as a symbol of their eternal friendship after his dad's passing, and Rin cries. (Haru wonders if he's hearing his dad, then.)

In the end, they put their trophy next to the medals, and bury them together.

 

 

Before Rin leaves, they stand and appreciate the great sakura tree, now dotted with buds, but not quite ready to bloom pink cherry blossoms yet, to Rin's dismay. Haru asks him if he was pursuing his dad's dream, and Rin tells him he wasn't sure yet—the words “but I'll find out” unspoken—and on those terms, Rin leaves them and boards a plane to Australia.

 

 

The first time Rin leaves, it's okay, because Haru knew that he would come back; Rin has his contact information, and he'd know where to find Haru, it'd be okay.

That's what Haru told himself every day, but every time the phone rang and it wasn't Rin, he couldn't help the inky feelings of disappointment that spread through his chest, nonetheless.

(He eventually gave up on waiting at the phone, thinking that at least he could lower his expectations so much that when Rin finally did contact him, it would be a pleasant surprise, and not with built-up disappointments and failed expectations.)

He still sees all the colors, though. Just not the exact same shade of red that Rin's eyes were, nor the exact shade of Rin's hair. He watches the cherry blossoms bloom and _doesn't_ think of Rin being unable to see it, not at all.

 

* * *

 

The second time he leaves, it isn't okay; as Rin runs out of his life, he takes the colors with him, leaving behind subdued dullness, one that Haru only now registers because he had seen the vibrancy of colors—after all, you only miss what you have once it's too late. It left a crushing emptiness in his chest, and for him, after having seen vivid colors, it left his world dull and washed out as a result. Haru blames himself for this, and decides to quit swimming, decides that he doesn't want to swim in a water that he now _knows_ is blue (but he can't see it)—

 

* * *

 

Four years later, Haru has grown used to the dullness of the world he now perceives. In fact, he'd let himself forget the colors he had once seen, believing that he would never see the world like that again.

(—believing that he would never see Rin again.)

He soaks in his bathtub and thinks to himself that he can't wait to become ordinary; he submerges his head underwater, and as he peers through the water at his ceiling, a single dot of pink appears in his vision, landing on the water's surface. A single, out-of-season sakura petal, and in retrospect, maybe Haru should've taken it as a sign. (He didn't, at the time.)

 

 

Nagisa comes back into his life like the whirlwind of excitement he is, and his exuberance allows Haru a glimpse of yellow (sunshine) to shine through the dullness, briefly. He pushes for them to start a swim club at Iwatobi, and for them to visit their old swim club before it gets demolished,

and this lets Haru see something he never thought he'd see again:

when Makoto calls his attention to a shadowy figure at the end of a hallway, and when said figure comes into closer view, Haru sees _red_ again, sees the wine-red hair and the red of _his_ eyes, of Rin's eyes, boring into his own.

 

 

When Rin walks out of his life again, dropping the trophy (that he _knows_ is blue, but he still can't see it) behind him, Haru finds that he can't see the redness of the ribbon tied around the trophy anymore.

 

(He comes to realize, in the midst of slowly regaining the colors revealed to him with the help of the team, that he was only able to see red with Rin—just like the way it had started.

When he had his back to that fence, red filled his vision; he doesn't quite see red again (though he starts to see some of the other colors again, with his teammates) until the race, until—)

 

 

“I'll never swim with you again. Ever.” and his world goes dark—the slowly regained colors (green, yellow, purple, blue) are lost to a crushing _darkness_ , even worse than flat dullness, and it leaves Haru to question his motives for swimming, to question why the race and that proclamation don't set him free like he thought it would.

 

Nagisa drags him out to watch his teammates swim, which doesn't soften the blow much, but does give him something more to consider, as he tries to figure out _why_ he swims (for the second time), staring up at the moonlight from the Iwatobi pool.

He comes back to see Makoto, having fallen asleep some time between ushering the others home and waiting for Haru to come back, bearing the message his underclassmen have left him, and learns that Kou had signed them up for the medley relay without telling them, and shakes Makoto awake to tell him that he'll swim the relay with them.

It doesn't fix things, but it gives Haru a reason for swimming again. He finds that swimming with the team makes him feel a twinge of happiness, though marred by the loss of the one who had shown this joy to him in the first place.

He doesn't find his answer yet, but it's okay, for now.

 

 

His teammates drag him out to a festival, and Haru finds himself lost in thought throughout the whole thing; he was still contemplating his reasons for swimming, and remembering _that_ relay race compared to his most recent one, and trying to find the connection between the two.

He stares off into space while following his friends around, and he ends up staring at the prizes of a minibooth, absently wondering what color they were. At other times, he finds himself watching a pair of friends, and thinks of Rin almost by reflex, and tries not to miss him too much: if he was never going to swim with Rin again, that meant he'd lost the one connection he had left with Rin, and he probably wasn't going to get to even interact with Rin again (not unless he kept swimming—then maybe they'd meet at a future competition and he can feel the water with Rin again).

Nagisa jumps into his field of vision as he looks up, and he starts to suspect that his teammates are trying to hide something from him. Eventually, he hears that Rin was at the festival as well, but it's okay; he tells Nagisa to get Rei to come back, and he takes his first step in learning how to open up about his feelings with the one person that knows him best, Makoto.

He wants to swim in a relay again, swim with the three that wanted Haru as a part of their team, and he finds a reason for swimming that doesn't depend on Rin swimming with him—

and then Kou tells them that Rin's joined the Samezuka relay team, and Haru starts wondering why Rin would put himself in a position to swim against them so soon after saying that he would never swim with him again.

 

 

They ask Coach Sasabe to come back as a coach for the Iwatobi swim team, and Haru dedicates himself to his training. Slowly, just as before, he regains the colors he lost, stopping at red yet again; the Iwatobi swim club is treated to Sasabe's special hot pot, and then they come across an old memory album and start reminiscing.

The redness returns with seeing the younger, happier Rin immortalized, but when he looks away, he can't see red at all. (Ironically, that's when Amakata-sensei mentions the “red string of fate,” but Haru doesn't say anything.) Around then, Haru notices Rei's discomfort, and as they walk home, Rei finally asks to be filled in on what had happened, tired of being the only one left out.

For some reason, Haru finds himself smiling, as he agrees to fill Rei in properly.

He watches Rei adjust colorless glasses before he starts to talk about their shared past with Rin, before he finally lets the whole team in on what had happened with them in the past, words he had never been able to say aloud before.

It feels like a large burden has been lifted, and he admits to looking forward to racing Rin again, though he doesn't quite understand why, right now.

 

 

And so the days pass before ~~Haru gets to race Rin again~~ the regional tournament; he learns that Rei goes to pay Rin a visit, but Rei tells them that he's done worrying about Rin, and Haru reassures Rei that he's a part of the team (and not a Rin-replacement), and soon after, the team is sent off and they travel to regionals. Haru stares out at a yellow sunset from his seat at the window, and wonders if Rin was looking at the same sunset as he was.

When they get there, they spend time together as a team, browsing some stores, eating dinner, and scoping out the competition site. They climb up the stairs, and Haru treats himself to one of the most pleasant blues he'd seen in a while, before they head back to their hotel rooms.

In the room he shared with Makoto, he finally musters the ability to show his gratitude for all Makoto's done for him through the years, before he goes for a run to work off his nerves for tomorrow. Outside, he bumps into Nagisa, who was looking for Rei, but ends up sitting on the swings at a nearby park with Nagisa, and thanks him as well, for making it all happen—it's easier, Haru finds, to get the words across, the second time around.

 

 

At the tournament, Haru finds himself drawn to a tree that resembled the great sakura tree at Iwatobi Elementary. He stares up at green foliage, unlike the bare brown branches of the sakura tree in early spring, and is lost in thought until Nagisa calls his attention. On a whim, Haru kneels down, finds a twig on the ground, and writes three words on the ground beneath that tree, before going and joining the others as they entered the stadium.

As soon as they finish registration, Haru looks out among the crowd for the tell-tale spot of red, for Rin, though Makoto catches him and chuckles, reassuring him that Rin will be there. He feels a strange sense of anticipation, looking forward to being able to swim with Rin again.

When the participants are all called to line up with their team, Haru looks again for Rin—and is a bit taken aback by seeing just how tired he looked. But things only start to fall apart when they watch the 100m free race, and when Haru sees how badly Rin swims it; instinctively, Haru jumps to his feet and runs, not quite knowing what he'd do when he got there, but he runs toward Rin regardless.

His teammates help him in his search, and then he hears those fateful words for a second time:

“I'm never swimming again!” and he walks off, not noticing his old teammates there at all but none of that matters as Haru's vision starts to tunnel, as the sudden strength and adrenaline that pushed him to find Rin was drained from him, and as he slumps against the nearest surface, his vision going dark once more.

 

This time, it's worse than the first time Rin said those words, worse than the last race they had, and if Rei hadn't stepped in, Haru doesn't know what he would have done, at that point. He was in no shape to swim, anyway, and might have dropped swimming altogether if not for Rei telling him about Rin's side of the story, and enabling him to free himself from the guilt he had put himself under for years.

His strength comes back to him, as he gets up and faces Rei—as Rei's words open up his heart, and he finally admits that he wants to swim with Rin—and Rei offers to give up his position in the relay, seeing it as the only logical solution. Haru asks if Rei was really okay with it, but he assures them, “Of course!” and then the Iwatobi swim club went off to try and find Rin for the second time.

 

They split up, and Haru runs the hardest he's ever exerted himself on dry land; the colors come flooding back with his energy, his drive to find Rin and tell him what he meant to him, but it still seems like they're almost out of time,

until Haru remembers the tree he had stopped at this morning, and thinks that that would probably be his last hope for finding Rin.

 

As he rounds the corner, white flowers blossom at his feet, and he's never been more relieved to see red again, as Rin contemplates the tree from the same spot Haru had been standing in earlier. Haru drinks in Rin's appearance as he catches his breath, gathers his thoughts, and then Rin turns and sees him, and scowls.

Rin asks him if he'd come to laugh, which was ridiculous, given the number of times Rin had even seen Haru laugh in the first place, but Haru is left shocked by Rin's tirade of self-hatred, able to finally see just where Rin had been, emotionally, for the last few weeks.

Haru finally manages to get a word in, edgewise, but Rin quickly shoots him down, before Haru makes a second attempt, before he tries to let him know just how much he meant to him, just how much Rin had impacted his life, how he had changed his entire _world—_

 

Rin tries to stop him from continuing, but he tries his best anyway, working his way up to telling Rin that it was all thanks to him that he learned what it meant to swim on a team, for the team; that it was thanks to him that he saw the best sight ever, that he can see the world's colors in a way he never would have before; that it was thanks to him that he's experienced the joy of swimming with teammates; but Rin stops him by throwing a punch that Haru catches, and they lose their balance and fall to the ground, falling into a makeshift wrestling match that pulls them underneath the tree again, and then

the struggle stops when Rin spots something on the ground near Haru's head

and when Haru feels a drop (a tear) land on his cheek, and he sees Rin cry and ask him why it didn't say “free” instead of “for the team,” and when it finally sinks in for Rin that he had influenced Haru to that extent, to the extent where Haru would take Rin's words as his own (and bring them back to Rin when he needed it most).

 

Haru smiles, and he knows he won't lose sight of the color red, again.

 

This time, it's Haru's turn to show Rin a sight he'd never seen before, and somehow, the tree's previously green foliage turns into pink cherry blossoms, flying in the sudden wind as Haru offers his hand to Rin, before they make their way back inside and try to beat the clock.

This time, Haru watches the faint glimmer of red move through blue water, sees exactly when to dive in and start his stroke, and helps widen the gap Rin already started widening between themselves and the other competitors, and they win first place.

 

Of course, they got disqualified, but that didn't matter next to having Rin back in his life, and the feeling of Rin pressed against him, almost nuzzling him and saying that he showed him the best sight; the rest of the old team joined in and made it a group hug, and it was just like old times.

 

Haru could finally see the red of Rei's glasses when Nagisa pulled him into their group picture, as Rin draped himself over his shoulders again and laughed, and this time, Haru couldn't find it in himself to be annoyed in the slightest.

 

**Author's Note:**

> (written for Haru's Birthday Bash on tumblr! inspired by a comic i saw for another ship, but when i thought about the idea with rinharu, it seemed oddly fitting with "the sight" Rin shows Haru. there might've been a better effect if this were illustrated, but ah well.)
> 
> (i'm not sure what i was thinking about when i wrote this orz (wrt the style) but i based a lot of the first half in high speed! and consequently missed some stuff i could've included from their younger years \o/ i may edit that stuff in later... or not, it might not matter too much)
> 
> (if you liked it, that makes me very happy uou)


End file.
